Explore the limits of your Android device
Build your own Cyanogen-Mod ROM with CMC
Cyanogen-Mod is the most popular custom ROM
for Android. It’s available for pretty much every device and is the perfect
starting point for anyone wanting to flash a ROM to their phone for the first
time due to its stability, reliability and ease of use.
Even beginners can now build their own ROM with ease thanks to CMC
Now it is becoming the perfect starting
point for anyone wanting to start building their own ROMs, too. The
Cyanogen-Mod Compiler (CMC) is an Ubuntu application that enables you to build
your own version of Cyanogen-Mod for any supported Android device, and it comes
with a polished user interface that replaces the command line interface that
normally makes the process alienating for beginners.
Naturally this isn’t something that comes
without risks. Most ROMs come with a certain level of support from its
developers and fellow users; when making your own ROM you will be on your own.
But as an introduction to building, tweaking and compiling ROMs this tool is
going to be hard to beat. Grab the software, and more information from its
developer at: http://bit.ly/K7eVkV.
Manage files in Recovery Mode
If you’re experienced at flashing ROMs on
your phone you’ll be familiar with Recovery Mode.
AROMA is a great-looking file manager for Recovery Mode
Recovery is a bootable partition on a phone
that contains the recovery console, and is used whenever system files need to
be repaired or replaced. Automatic OS tasks like running a system update or
performing a factory reset use recovery, as will you when you are flashing a
ROM (although you will almost certainly be using a different recovery console
such as Clockwork, which has a greater number of features). Due to the
limitations of recovery it can be quite frustrating to use. If you need to move
files around, for example, you’ll more than likely find yourself booting back
into the Android OS, and then back into recovery more than once. But now a new
file manager for Recovery Mode has been created. AROMA File Manager is not an
app, but a flash able zip, so you’ll need to flash it while in Recovery Mode in
the same way as you would flash a ROM.
You will then be able to access a fully
featured, touch-based file manager you can use to move your files around as you
need. To download the zip, view this thread on the xda-developers website:
http:// bit.ly/Jri2X9.
Quick hack: How to repair permissions
If you start encountering app crashes or
other random apps reboot on your phone then you might find repairing
permissions helps. This will return the permissions for the software to their
original state and should improve system stability.
A Use
ROM Manager
The easiest way to repair permissions is by
using the ROM Manager App. Download and install. You will need to have rooted
your phone before you are able to use it, so make sure you’ve done this first.
Repair
permissions
Launch the app and scroll down to the
Utilities section of the menu. Select Fix Permissions from the list and then
when asked to confirm you want to do this click Yes. The process will begin
instantly.
And
you’re done!
The entire process will take a few minutes,
and although your phone won’t reboot it’s a good idea to leave it to finish the
task before you use it. You might wish to reboot manually afterwards.
"It looks stunning and has lots of
features... it could quickly become one of the most popular file
explorers"
Samsung’s S Voice leaked to other phones
At the launch of the Galaxy S III, Samsung
made a big deal about its new voice control feature, S Voice. Inevitably the
firmware of the S III was leaked early, and the S Voice app was extracted and
made available on other Android devices.
Can you try S Voice on your phone?
At the time of writing Samsung had moved to
block devices other than the S III from using the software -it processes most
of its commands via a server.
Determined users could bypass this
relatively easily, although given that the app is created in conjunction with
Vlingo you can test out some of the features through more legitimate means. The
app Vlingo Labs in the Google Play store is a free tool where many new voice
recognition features are tested, and bears more than a passing similarity to
what you’ll get within S Voice on the Galaxy S III.
